In our reviews of the Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700, we observed that while AMD made leaps with performance/Watt, the cards felt let down by the archaic lateral-blower cooling solution that hit up to 43 dBA at load, and with temperatures of the RX 5700 XT GPU reaching up to 92°C - unacceptable for a GPU that only draws 220 W. The reference cooler of the RX 5700 also exhibited some very strange fan-speed behavior at high temperatures. Much of our praise for the RX 5700-series was conditional to the hope that add-in-board (AIB) partners will innovate good cooling solutions that are quiet and keep the GPU cool. We have these custom-design graphics cards based on the two GPUs to look forward to, but according to a Reddit post by Scott Herkelman, who leads the Radeon brand at AMD, we might have to wait a little longer.

Herkelman stated that custom-design graphics cards based on the Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 will start hitting the shelves only by mid-August. He added that he is working with his team to get many of these custom-design cards in the hands of reviewers before that, so consumers have review data ahead of availability. He also acknowledged that the reference cooling solution is the biggest drawback of the reference design, and that he "liked the idea" of providing reference-design cards with dual-fan or triple-fan axial flow reference cooling solutions similar what NVIDIA provides with its Founders Edition cards.